ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses three chief Louse-Borne diseases in temperate climates, namely relapsing fever, typhus fever and trench fever. Relapsing fever has become extinct in Britain, except for a rare imported case. In the earlier part of the 19th century it was not uncommon, though confused with other forms of fever. Typhus fever has been considered with some fullness in Evolution of Preventive Medicine. The two main factors which have led to the rapid disappearance of typhus are the diminution of lousiness, and the prevention of the passage of lice from typhus patients to others. Trench fever and typhus alike may be taken to illustrate the lesson that even when the source of infection cannot be directly attacked, the links connecting case with case can be broken, with the result that in the end the disease ceases to spread. This indeed is the general role of applied preventive medicine.
